Seventy Six: Beneath the Castle

The stairs led interminably downwards, and grew colder as they descended. Nova shuddered and drew her blanket closer around her, thanking the gods that Nika had found her shoes to wear. Thorne's flickering light illuminated walls bare of ornamentation, and though the air smelled of age and disuse, the steps were worn smooth. She guessed they descended well into the centre of the hill on which Harkenn's castle sat, below even the crypt, perhaps.

Thorne's shadow runner had emerged from his hood and now rode on his shoulder, ears erect as her owner moved inexorably downwards. Nova wasn't claustrophobic, but the monotony of the narrow passage was starting to get to her by the time it opened out into a room. It wasn't a large room, more of an antechamber – another door led away into gloom on the opposite wall – but what had halted Thorne in his tracks were the walls. The stairs had been entirely unadorned, but the room they stood in was covered in murals. As the Unspoken boy brightened his light and held it aloft, Nova looked around at large depictions of crowned figures in chalky red pigments and faded blues. The walls had been treated with some kind of plaster and in patches it had fallen off, but they were remarkably intact.

"Nova," Thorne said, and though he murmured his voice bounced around the small chamber in an unsettling manner. She crossed over to where he stood, his light still up. On the wall in front of him was a large mural of a crescent moon with a dagger balanced between the points.

"That's the symbol," she said, needlessly and mostly out of surprise. She looked around, and her gaze snagged on the beckoning doorway. "I think we might find more answers in here."

Thorne followed as she went through it, his green light broken by the shadows of her legs. She moved to one side of him to allow the beam to fall on the room ahead, and felt her stomach turn.

"This is a tomb," Thorne said, "isn't it?"

Rows of dark stone plinths stretched away from them down the hall, and on each one was a coffin, also made of stone. Nova shuddered, not with cold this time. "Not the Harkenn tomb. This is older."

"I thought the Harkenns lived a ridiculous amount of time."

"They do, and there are a lot of them down in the crypt. Which means this is really old. Ancient. Perhaps from the time this world was first populated." She chewed on her lip. "It certainly predates the arrival of my people. I knew nothing of this."

"But if it's that old, how is it so well-preserved?" Thorne asked, though he didn't seem to expect an answer. "Comparable burial sites where I'm from are usually piles of rubble after so long."

"They've never been exposed to the elements," Nova suggested. "We are a long way beneath the castle now, I think. I doubt anyone comes down here anymore."

"Then why not just brick it over altogether?" Thorne started slowly down the row, looking at each coffin as he went, holding his light to the lids. "If you see that symbol again, let me know."

They both searched for a long while. Nova found the symbol on three coffins furthest from the entrance. On the opposite row, Jordan found two more. When they ran out of coffins to inspect, he ranged to a further corner of the room and let out a strangled yell.

"A Firebull," Nova said, joining him. The statue was an intricately rendered representation of the real thing, so lifelike that she didn't blame Thorne for yelling. It was worn with age, but at one point she could tell the eyes had been painted black.

"But why?" Jordan said plaintively. Ren jumped down from his shoulder and began sniffing around the statue's feet. "Why put one of these bastards in your tomb?" He went silent, thinking, and abruptly seemed to realise something. "These were early Nicts."

Nova glanced at him. "What makes you figure that?"

"Callan told me," Thorne said absently.

"You seem on friendly terms with Callan."

Thorne was too distracted to answer; Ren had reappeared from behind the statue dragging something in her teeth that he now bent down to pull all the way out.

"This is definitely not old," he muttered, spreading a pile of black cloth out on the floor. "Oh, fuck."

Nova stared at the cloak on the floor. It was the cut of the cloaks the Unspoken killers were known to wear, and it was clearly new. Thorne got down on his hands and knees and, with a grunt of effort, pulled out a sack from a hollow behind the statue, overflowing with cloaks and other items of clothing.

"Shit a brick," Thorne cursed quietly. "They must use this as a storeroom right under Harkenn's nose."

"How?" Nova asked. "The door is guarded night and day."

"Another entrance?" Thorne asked, not hopefully. The room, while vast, had no other visible entrance apart from the one they'd entered from. "Or paying off the guard?"

Nova frowned. "I could concede that as a possibility if it were one or two soldiers who always guarded this door, but they change all the time. You can't pay a whole barracks off without someone saying something. Most of the soldiers are extremely dedicated to Harkenn, for some unfathomable reason."

"Then I don't know," Thorne said, "but they're clearly able to get in and out, or these wouldn't be here."

"Perhaps they put them here before Harkenn realised the key was missing and put a guard on the door."

"Maybe. It just seems too coincidental that we find these and the symbol these things seem to carry with them in one place." Thorne looked up abruptly at a noise – a muffled thump. "Did you hear that?"

Nova was surprised at herself for sounding as calm as she did when she asked, "Can you make that light any brighter?"

"I can make it bigger," he offered, and then obliged. She felt his eyes on her as she crossed the hall and into the antechamber again, and looked up the stairs. Her fears were confirmed.

"We've been shut in," she said.

"We've what?"

Thorne scrambled to his feet, catching Ren up in his arms as he did so. He darted past her, climbing the stairs two at a time, and she followed slowly, mostly so that she wasn't left alone in the pitch blackness. She didn't like the atmosphere of the tomb; there was something more sinister about it than it simply being a resting place for the dead. It had a strange ambience to it that she couldn't put a finger on, though she was sure she'd felt it before. She caught up to the Unspoken as he hammered on the door, shouting through it. No one replied from the other side, nor did anyone open it.

"You still have your key, don't you?" she asked.

"Key needs a keyhole," Thorne replied shortly, out of breath from climbing and shouting. "If you can find one on this side that I've missed, I'm happy to be wrong, but I swear this side doesn't have one."

Nova felt around with her fingers where she knew the keyhole to be on the other side of the wall, but instead of finding a keyhole she only caught onto a strain of aura from outside, lingering from their touch on the door.

"Cael," she whispered. "Stop shouting."

Thorne fell silent. Carefully she raised her walls and expanded them to include Thorne's aura, though Cael didn't appear to be interested in attacking them today. She felt no tentative touch or prying threads. She couldn't easily tell, through the thickness of the wall, whether the Angel still stood there.

"I'll signal Yddris and hope to high bloody heaven that he can find a copy of this key," Thorne muttered. "I can't believe that feathery fuck shut us in here. No offence."

"I am not feathery, nor, I would hope, a fuck," Nova replied mildly. "No offence taken."

She resumed her search of the wall by touch, trying to find a strangely even ridge or a cold draught that indicated a gap in the stone. She found nothing, and frowned at the strangeness of a door only lockable from one side.

"How did he know we were in here?" Thorne asked, stepping back from the door himself. Panic was a barely-controlled thread in his aura.

"If he passed close by, it would not have been hard for him," Nova replied. She was used to being confined to dark spaces with no idea of when she would get free of it. The time to panic was when it looked like they never would, and there was not a chance that Yddris wouldn't raise an alarm or question Devon if Thorne was missing for too long. Therefore all they had to do was wait, and they might as well try and find out more while they were doing it.

"Signal Yddris," she said, turning on the step and beginning to descend. "Someone will come. We might as well find as much as we can while we're here."

The stairs were silent behind her for a moment. She felt a frisson of aura in the air, sharp with proximity, and then Thorne's footsteps came back down towards her, bringing the light with him. She was silently relieved; if he had stayed where he was she would have been forced to stay with him, as he produced the only light they had.

"Is this place rune-warded?" she asked. She didn't want him to panic either; she was the only one here to deal with it, so she would keep him occupied before it got to that point.

"Yeah. Not very well-maintained, though. It's flickering in places."

"You can see it? Not just sense it?"

"Aye." A pause. "You can't?"

"I have magic of my own but I'm not Unspoken," she told him over her shoulder. "Just like you cannot read an aura the way I can, I cannot read the work of your craftsmen. And even if I could see it, it wouldn't make a jot of sense to me."

"It doesn't make a jot of sense to me, either," Jordan grumbled, but she only pressed her lips against a smile.

The bag of garments was strewn where they had left it, in the long room full of coffins. Thorne returned to it while Nova weaved between the plinths, running her fingers over the patterns on the coffin lids and trying to catch some strain of aura to give her a clue who had been here. Some lids were still legible enough to show the remains of ancient writing. She frowned, and then an idea came to her.

"Do you have your journal with you?" she asked Thorne.

"Yes," he said slowly.

"Can you make a rubbing of these glyphs? I'm sure I've seen them somewhere before. If I can't place it, I'm sure Grace could. Or Nika, perhaps."

Thorne came over and looked down at the writing. He pulled a small leatherbound book out of his pocket and offered it to her with a graphite stick. "I don't have enough control to make this light hover, and I don't want to burn the book."

She took the items. She could tell from his wary gaze that she held something of great importance to him, and felt a familiar tingle of nervousness. Harkenn had punished her severely in the past for touching items of value to him, and now she didn't trust herself not to ruin it. When Thorne showed no signs of changing his mind, she tentatively opened it to try and find a blank page, balking when she felt the quality of the paper under her fingers. Important and expensive.

"Maybe I don't need to..." she began, and then paused at the drawing the book fell open to. "Is this...?"

"Oh." Chagrin tinged Thorne's aura. "Sorry, I probably should have asked. I keep getting in trouble for that."

Nova stared at the drawing of her side profile on one side of the spread, and then at Grace's on the other. The shading suggested firelight, and she did recall several evenings where she and Grace had sat just so in front of the inn fire. She'd never noticed Thorne drawing them. The woman in the drawing looked so at peace, so as to be almost unfamiliar, even though he hadn't omitted her scars or the tented fabric of her shirt where her wing stumps were.

"You aren't offended, are you?"

She almost laughed aloud at the genuine worry in his voice, but kept it to herself and only shook her head. "No."

She turned to a blank page and began her work, though she could sense his nervousness and curiosity still hovering at her shoulder. She didn't want to tell him that she hadn't seen her own face in a long time; Harkenn had no occasion to give her a mirror. If he was satisfied with how she looked, no more than that was needed. She had never seen how she and Grace looked, side by side, and now that she had a peculiar warm knot had formed in the pit of her stomach, gently smouldering.

"I love her, you know." Thorne had drifted away, but at her words he froze. She paused in rubbing over the glyphs, surprising herself with the words and knowing they were true at the same time. "I know you have some reservations about that. About me. I can't give her more than I have to give, and maybe that isn't enough. But what I can offer, I give it gladly."

A long pause. Then, "I'm glad. And I'm glad that she has you. God knows I've been a shit brother lately, and it helps me sleep at night knowing she'll tell you things she won't tell me anymore." His voice cracked on the last. "Why didn't she tell me about the spy?"

"For much the same reason you didn't tell her about the Devils."

"But it wasn't even her fault."

Nova gave him an even look. "And the Devils were yours? You self-flagellate like a Nict over that, when there was nothing you could have done to avoid it. If there had been, Harkenn would have punished you. Trust me."

"He forced me into that contract."

Nova did laugh then, though there was no humour in it. "That was not a punishment. That was a contingency to keep himself safe. As you are Unspoken he cannot harm you. His only options were to aid you, at great expense, or to make the most of the opportunity." She cocked her head. "Of course, he would always prefer you to think that he's responding to disobedience rather than neutralising a serious threat."

"I'm not a..." Thorne spluttered, and then fell quiet as he really thought about it. "Oh. Well. I suppose I..."

"Especially with the man who is teaching you," Nova said delicately. "He's been a thorn in Harkenn's side for years. It will chafe the lord enormously that he is the one offering his best hope of survival."

Thorne didn't respond, though his silence was thoughtful.

Nova finished with her rubbing, and frowned down at her result. The glyphs were worn and hadn't come out well in the graphite, but she hoped Grace would be able to make out enough of them to at least guess. At a noise behind her she turned to see what Thorne was doing, and found him standing stock-still in the centre aisle between the coffins. Blank terror suffused his aura.

"What is it?" she asked, but he shushed her.

Near-silent, he drifted back to her and said, in a voice barely above a breath, "That coffin lid just moved."

She almost scoffed. Would have scoffed, if she hadn't at that moment seen the same lid he pointed at shift with a light scrape of stone on stone, and her breath turned solid in her throat.

"But I can't sense anyone," she whispered. She had checked every coffin; if someone had been hiding inside one, she would have felt their aura – probably would have felt it before they reached the bottom of the stairs. Which could only mean... "You're armed, right?"

A quiet scrape of metal and a muffled curse was her answer, and then he pressed the handle of a long knife into her hand. He himself held a hunting knife that looked sharp and polished but well-used – a cruel blade, and one she doubted Yddris had given him.

"Aim for the head," she whispered. "The last one was put down with a clubbing."

He winced beside her, the air around them growing harsh and sharp with his fear. "Easier said than done, if it has one of those swords. Fuck. This is why Cael locked us down here, isn't it?"

She let out a gasp of indrawn breath as the stone lid thudded to the floor. Thorne's flame flickered madly over the walls and ceiling, making the figure emerging from the coffin even more grotesque in its eerie light. The terror in his aura was almost choking her, infectious in its intensity. He brandished his sword ahead of him like a pike; she allowed the weight of the blade to swing gently at her side. It was a familiar sensation, one she knew from another lifetime. From the age she was old enough to wield one she had carried a blade, until her life as a slave had deprived her of the right. She let her gaze focus on the dark shape emerging just beyond the reach of Thorne's light, only the planes of its ghastly face illuminated.

"Oh my god," Thorne whispered in horror, and Ren snarled. "That's what they look like?"

They backed towards the wall, putting the second line of coffins between them and the thing.

"They're stolen corpses," Nova murmured, perhaps sharper than she had intended it. She thought she could be excused, given the circumstances. "The Kelians prepare them that way."

"It's one thing if they stay dead," Thorne retorted, and she could only agree with him. "Entirely another if they don't."

The figure looked uncoordinated at first, as if it had grown stiff; not the fluid, fast movements she had come to expect of these things. She watched it for a moment, watched it inching towards the cloaks Thorne had left strewn across the floor with knees that barely bent, and figured that they had a narrow chance to get away before it limbered up.

Only the door was locked.

That was a problem for when they got there; if rescue came, it was far better to be standing at the door than pinned in the coffin room. Then again, she thought, at least down here they had room to manoeuvre... No. Better to have their backs to something and a better chance of getting out.

"Keep your magic to yourself, and come on," she murmured, tugging on Thorne's sleeve. His gaze was still frozen on the figure and for a dread moment she thought she might have to push him, but with remarkable steel that she was sure he hadn't possessed months ago, he shook himself out and followed her. Though their breath laboured as they climbed, neither of them complained or slowed their pace. The knife was an uncomfortable weight in her hand after all these years. Last time she had wielded one she had killed nine soldiers.

They reached the top, which suddenly didn't seem far enough away. They could hear it shuffling below, and Ren's quiet snarling filled their ears.

"Shh," Thorne said, testing the door again. "Shh."

"Someone's coming," Nova said. "I can feel an aura."

"Not Cael? Please tell me it's not another dark-damned Angel."

"No. I don't know whose it is."

At that moment two things happened – the blessed sound of a key scraped in the lock from the other side, and they distinctly heard footsteps on the stairs below them, coming fast.

"Oh, fuck," Thorne said. Nova pressed herself against the door, knife out ahead, her heart thundering in her ears, and she knew in that moment that she wouldn't welcome death if it came for her like she would have a year ago. All she saw in her mind's eye were bright hazel eyes and that welcoming smile, someone who was always glad to see her. She wanted that to happen again. And again and again.

The door opened and she stumbled out into the courtyard, the frigid air hitting her like a slap. She gasped and fell on her backside in surprise, just barely managing to keep her wing-stumps from striking the ground behind her. Thorne tumbled out after her, crying, "Shut it! Shut it!"

The door slammed, and Nova saw the glint of a blade in the gap just before it vanished. Thorne fell to his knees on the cobbles next to her, breath heaving from him and magic erupting in a halo around each hand.

"Are you alright?" she asked. She didn't presume to get any closer before he had control of himself again. He took in two deep breaths and sighed them out again.

"Did not get you again, then, eh?" A deep voice with a Varthian accent rumbled overhead. Nova squinted up at their rescuer, and froze. She had seen the man before; this was the Varthian Devil who had saved her and Grace during the demon siege, from the same thing currently battering faintly on the other side of the stone door. The huge man's attention was on Thorne, but he spared her an incurious glance. She had also seen his face on plenty of wanted posters, though on those he had not displayed the rough concern that now showed on it as he crouched in front of the panicking Unspoken boy.

"I thought it was gonna have me again," Thorne choked, answering both of them. "It didn't, but I felt it brush against my back. Ugh." He peered up at the Varthian. "What are you doing here? How did you know...? What...." He trailed off. The Varthian smirked at him. "You're deliberately not helping me out here."

"I came because our employer told your teacher that you were likely in difficulty," the Varthian said, after a low chuckle. Nova stayed where she was, trying to remain unobtrusive. This was one of Thorne's Devil contacts, and she didn't want any part in it. If she had thought she could sneak away unnoticed she might have tried. "And then I ran into your witch man tutor haring this way. That is where I got your whereabouts."

"Where's Yddris now?"

"He has gone to help with the crisis in the city. He told me to take you back to his, but you have a job first."

"I almost died just now."

The Varthian's face remained impassive. "But you did not actually die."

A pause. The words finally filtered through. "What crisis?"

Both men finally looked at her, Thorne as if he had totally forgotten she was there, and the Varthian as if he had expected her to be mute.

"The patients of a plague hospital got out," the Varthian finally said. "And four demons are suspected to be carrying it, though all of them have spread throughout the city. Unspoken are the only ones out on the streets."

"Apart from you," Thorne said questioningly, his voice trembling. "Fuck. Fucking fuck. I didn't even know there was a plague hospital."

"Apart from me. Sick people cannot climb rooftops," the Varthian said with a grin, which quickly sobered. "And we will get one chance to do this job, so we must hurry."

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Regards,

Elinor (S E Harrison)